Likewise, the 1794 poem, The Tyger, by Englishpoet, William Blake (1757-1827), would always be a part of every poetry section; so much so that saying the first line, "Tyger Tyger, burning bright," to a group of my generation will still evoke as a chorus the second line, "In the forests of the night." The poem continues, "What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" Blake saw symmetry in the tiger, since symmetry is ubiquitous in nature.

Since atoms will align themselves into regular arrays in crystals, we see symmetry in natural gemstones. With the advent of the microscope, the symmetry of snowflakes, caused by the regular arrangement of hydrogen-bonded water molecules as ice grows from a central seed, became apparent. The symmetrical body plan of animals is also apparent, and this is seen also in microscopic organisms.

"[The universe] is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it..."[3]

"It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here... The observation which comes closest to an explanation for the mathematical concepts' cropping up in physics which I know is Einstein’s statement that the only physicaltheories which we are willing to accept are the beautiful ones. It stands to argue that the concepts of mathematics, which invite the exercise of so much wit, have the quality of beauty."

Pigliucci cites Lee Smolin's book, The Trouble with Physics,[8] a diatribe against String Theory, for evidence against today's idea that we should follow the math to the exclusion of all else. I wrote about Smolin's book in an earlier article (Falsifiability, September 15, 2016). Such sentiments are also contained in Peter Woit's book, Not Even Wrong.[9-10] The title of Woit's book derives from Wolfgang Pauli's famous assessment of a proposed physics theory. Pigliucci wrote about String Theory in an earlier article in Aeon in which he states that physicists don't seem to hold philosophy in high regard.[11]

Pigliucci writes that the connection between beauty and truth was first proposed by Plato in his Symposium.[12] The idea that physical theories should be both simple and beautiful was held by the Nobel Physics Laureate, Paul Dirac; and his fellow Laureate, Richard Feynman, said that "You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity."[5] As Pigliucci explains, the simplicity of which Dirac and Feynman spoke is not the simplicity manifest in Ockham's razor. Ockham’s razor is an epistemological principle about how things are known, while Dirac and Feynman's simplicity is a metaphysical principle about the fundamental nature of reality.[5] I wrote about how metaphysical ideas have influenced science in an earlier article (Metaphysics, November 12, 2018).

Pigliucci concludes that "there is absolutely no reason to think that we evolved an aesthetic sense that somehow happens to be tailored for the discovery of the ultimate theory of everything."[5] He suggests that physicists should engage with philosophers in an interdisciplinarydialogue.